Competition

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If you’re like me then you are sick of SEO. These cookie-cutter predictive patterns that create a myopic filter for the content we see online make as much sense as casting a rapper in a film noir, or taking a three-year old to a fine china shop.

This must be what Krassimir Fotev thought when he looked at how we gather, process and retrieve information and thought — pssst… I can do better. So he did. (Don’t you just love people like that?). He created Peer Belt — a personalized search engine that organizes the content you encounter online.

After first getting a masters degree in Physics, then giving up a cushy job at Credit Suisse Krassimir created Peer Belt, and hasn’t looked back since.

We had tons of questions for Krassimir — like what the heck Peer Belt actually does, so we fired off a series of rapid-fire questions to him about his entrepreneurial experience and the technology behind the brand. He then banged his head against his desk until something brilliant came out. And brilliant it was…

Within a month of its launch, Google+ is considered to be peril to the current social networking don Facebook. However Google+ needs much more enhancements else it may join the Google’s flop list (Orkut, Buzz & Wave). Albeit, the features of Google+ are stunning and the User Interface is too gorgeous than any existing social network, Google+ is still a half scorched one and it needs striking enhancements to capture the throne from Facebook.

As Microsoft IE’s web browser market share slips to an all time low, the gloves have come off as Microsoft begins to exploit the bugs in their competition. At just 54.3% of market share IE has been steadily declining for years, but Microsoft is recognizing a rare opportunity to outwit their competition, despite their inferior technology. Microsoft executive Ari Bixhorn has begun to address high-level enterprise-grade customers like IBM, trying to lure them away from IE competition. Bixhorn has been poking a stick into IE’s competition by trumping the level of support offered by the likes of Mozilla’s Firefox, and pointing out the continued critical-rated security bugs in Google’s Chrome browser.

John Walicki, IBM CIO has openly chastised Mozilla’s refusal to support Firefox version 4 once they move to version 5, a move that Walicki considers akin to a “kick in the stomach”. This sentiment is being felt by many administrator professionals in the IT industry who expect continual multi-version support.

Business Intelligence, analytics and performance management applications seem to have enjoyed a good amount of revenue through sales. Business Intelligence as quoted in Wikipedia “refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/ or departments, or by associated costs and incomes. BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of business intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, business performance management, benchmarking, and text mining & predictive analytics.”

In essence, every organization requires BI to ensure that there is up-to-date record management that will help them in taking better business decisions; hence it is also called the Decision Support System (DSS). According to reports from Gartner the spending by several organizations on BI, analytics and performance management applications has risen 13.4% last year with revenue of 10.5 billion dollars. The economic downturn that occurred a couple of years ago left a huge impact on every company’s costing, due to which they looked at reducing the costs incurred and at the same time wanted to improve productivity. Software solutions such as BI and Analytics helped firms find efficiencies and gain competitive advantage. This is exactly why BI sales never dropped, in fact grew even though the sales of enterprise software solutions dropped by 2.5% during 2009. Strong customer demand and impeccable sales efforts of BI vendors helped influence the clients.

The birds and bees of the social world are fighting it out in the marketing world to see who is leading. It is an all pertinent question – Which is better for marketing, Facebook or Twitter? And there are many answers to it.

Eventbrite analyses this question to reveal that, “Facebook equals $2.52, a share on Twitter equals $0.43, a share on LinkedIn equals $0.90, and a share through our email friends application equals $2.34”. It further declares, “Social Commerce takes online commerce to a new level. It marries the natural act of sharing and socializing with friends and the act of buying something online”. Everything happens on the internet, and not even on different web pages.

There have been several occasions where I have written about Linux and I remember most of the stuff that I have written reflects on how good Linux has been and the kind revelation it has brought about in the software world. Some have been on latest open source products like the New Linux Mint 10 and some other on bright forecasts made for Linux; some on its innovative ways of collaborating with private proprietary firms and some on the battle between Open Source and Proprietary Software companies. There seems to be enough proof that Linux has thrown up huge competition to the private proprietary firms.

Leverage, the Venture Capital and Private Equity Club of IIM Ahmedabad and the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship bring to you the 1st edition of the Venture Capital and Private Equity Conference on the 6th and 7th of February, 2009. The theme for the first edition of the Conference, Leverage 2009 is “Venture Capital and Private Equity: Investing and Managing Portfolios in Distressed Times”.

One of the main attraction of the event is that of the B-Plan Showcase, where in startups will be invited to pitch to the Investors. If the Investors find the concept interesting and the team worth it, they will go ahead and likely offer them funding.

B-Plans will be scrutinized through a rigorous three step process of evaluation culminating in a closed door business plan presentation before industry experts and investors. Teams would not only get expert advice on how to fine-tune their plans and nip any shortcomings, but also a golden chance to get seed funding from the potential investors. Deadline for first round entries is January 16th, 2009. Download Showcase details and rules (pdf).